Public defence

Disputas: Mette Edvardsen

Mette Edvardsen er ph.d.-stipendiat i programmet for kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid ved avdeling dans, Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo.

Det kunsteriske utviklingsarbeidet er tilgjengelig i NVA (Norwegian Research Information Repository).

Disputasen gjennomføres på engelsk.

Sammendrag av prosjektet:

With the doctoral research project ‘Writing in space and time’ I have addressed the role of language in my artistic practice by considering choreography as writing. I have looked at this larger notion of the written, not in opposition to the body or movement, but as an extension of it. As part of my choreographic practice I work with language as material, using voice, speech and memory to write in space and time. I consider language, not merely as content, information or a vehicle for meaning, but as material and a choreographic capacity that participates in the organisation of attention, experience and imagination. Speaking implies listening, and I understand dance as an art form which is not primarily visual, but an art form where different senses are being engaged and are working together, such as listening, feeling and seeing, and invoking remembering, imagining and thinking. Spoken language can produce spaces, images and temporalities without relying on visual representation, allowing listening and imagination to become active modes through which choreography is experienced.

My interest in language and orality stems from a desire to work with a removal of the visual focus and to propose listening, imagination and memory as alternative modes of writing and experience, to disrupt the prevalent modes driven by visibility and visuality. Rather than diminishing what is seen, this shifts the function of visibility: the body on stage does not necessarily represent or illustrate what is spoken, but can become a presence through which something absent, remembered or imagined is made perceptible.

Throughout the research, speech and voice developed towards singing, music, sound and field recordings, all approached as materials for choreographic writing. Practising and performing have been central research methods, allowing questions and materials to develop through repetition, duration and the continued encounter with audiences. At the same time, I have confronted writing in space and time with writing on the page, investigating what happens when oral, embodied and remembered material is transferred into published form. The relation between performance and publication consequently became an important dimension of the research. Publishing functions not simply as documentation or dissemination, but as another site of artistic practice and a means of examining how choreography, language and memory transform as they move between bodies, spaces, performances and pages. Through these different forms, the research proposes writing as a practice that exceeds the written text and emerges through relations between language, embodiment, time, space and imagination.

Komité

Komitéleder: Saskia Holmkvist
André Lepecki
Itziar Okariz

Veiledere

Dora García
Chrysa Parkinson/ Mårten Spångberg

Bio

Mette Edvardsen is an artist based in Oslo. Her work is situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Although her works often explore other media or other formats, such as radio, books and writing, and her interest is always in their relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation. She has worked since 1994 as a dancer and performer for several companies and projects and develops her own work since 2002. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and a performer. Productions of hers include the performances Black (2011), No Title (2014), We to be (2015), which form a trilogy on the limits of language. With oslo (2017) and Penelope sleeps (2019), she continues the work with language and speech, adding singing voices of a choir and making an opera. In her long-term project Time has fallen alseep in the afternoon sunshine (since 2010), a group of people memorize a book of their choice and together they form a library of living books. Over time, the project gradually grew and has been presented in many cities around the world, as well as developing in different formats. A retrospective of her work was presented at Black Box theatre in Oslo in 2015; a focus program Idiorritmias at MACBA in Barcelona in 2018; a monographic presentation
at Amant in New York in 2022. In 2022-23 she developed a research project, The Appendixes #1–4, in residence at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers outside Paris, in continuation of Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. In 2023 she premiered the work Livre d’images sans images, performance, paper and vinyl, made in collaboration with her daughter and XONG vinyl-only record label in Bologna. All you have to do is die (2025) treats sound through light, using the old ‘ghost lamp’. Alongside of her live works she has developed a publishing practice within her own artistic work, and she co-founded a small independent publishing house, Varamo Press, in 2018. She runs the small project room and bookshop Norma T in Oslo, which also hosts the library of Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunhine.